The People's Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century (Vintage) (78 page)

But the moratorium did not last long. Within a year, the
Independent
began a second wave of articles, which found evidence of undue Jewish influence in a host of places—the verdict in the case of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, the Dawes Plan to reduce German reparations, the opposition to President Coolidge. The newspaper also launched a relentless attack against Captain Robert Rosenbluth of the U.S. Army, whom it accused of murdering his commanding officer, Major Alexander Cronkite, in 1918. Despite a ruling by an army board of inquiry that the shooting death had been a tragic accident, and oblivious to Rosenbluth's unblemished record as a veteran of World War I who had been gassed and wounded on the Western Front, the
Independent
began a years-long campaign against him. It suggested that Rosenbluth may have been a “dirty German Jew spy” or a Jewish Bolshevik agitator. After investigating the case at Ford's behest, the Department of Justice declined to press charges against Rosenbluth.
⁴⁴

In April 1924, the
Independent
initiated the series that embroiled it in national controversy. In “Jewish Exploitation of Farmers' Organizations,” the newspaper attacked the efforts of Sapiro, claiming he was the leader of a Jewish conspiracy to unify American agriculture under a “Jewish holding company.” For nearly a year, the articles detailed how “a band of Jews— bankers, lawyers, money-lenders, advertising agencies, fruit-packers, produce-buyers, experts—is on the backs of the American farmer.” They fingered Sapiro as a particular villain.
⁴⁵

In certain ways, Sapiro made a logical target for muckraking journalism. In 1919, he had begun to organize farmers' organizations throughout the United States, and within a few years had formed the National Council of Farmers' Cooperative Marketing Associations as an umbrella group for some sixty regional associations. Representing almost a million farmers in the United States and Canada, Sapiro's organization used the classic tactic of cooperatives—withholding crops from the market temporarily, in order to force higher prices. But Sapiro's autocratic personality and managerial missteps created difficulties. He hired several incompetent subordinates, ridiculed other agricultural leaders, and made several bad decisions in marketing farmers' goods. Discontent with his leadership forced him to step down in 1924. There were also allegations of misappropriated funds and excessive legal fees.
⁴⁶

In the midst of these difficulties, Sapiro grew furious at the attacks on his character and agenda in Ford's “Jewish Exploitation” articles. After absorbing these assaults for several months, he finally struck back. In January 1925, he sent a thirty-one-page letter to Ford demanding a public retraction of the charges mounted in the Dearborn
Independent.
When none was forthcoming, he sued for libel. According to Liebold, when he cautioned that Cameron's zeal in attacking Sapiro might create legal problems,
Ford “told me to lay off Cameron, and that if Cameron could get us into a lawsuit, that would be just what he wanted.”
⁴⁷

For a year after Sapiro filed his lawsuit, depositions were taken, and a trial date was set for March 1926. But Ford successfully sought a continuance until September, at which time his attorneys had the judge disqualified and gained another continuance. Finally, after two years of maneuvering, the case came to trial on March 15, 1927, in the U.S. District Court in Detroit. Judge Fred S. Raymond presided. The plaintiff was represented by William Henry Gallagher and Robert S. Marx; Ford was defended by U.S. Senator James A. Reed of Missouri, assisted by a team of seven attorneys.

During opening statements, the plaintiff's lawyers argued that the
Independent
was “Ford's mouthpiece” and that its attacks upon Sapiro were slanderous and had widened to include slanderous assaults on Jews as a whole. Ford's team countered with a complex defense. First, it contended that the newspaper was telling the truth by exposing Sapiro as “a grafter, faker, fraud, and cheat.” Second, Ford's attorneys insisted that, under the law, you could not libel a race. “If Henry Ford authorized an attack on the Jewish
race,
that is something for which no
individual
can recover damages,” Reed declared. Finally, Ford lawyers argued that the industrialist was the head of a corporation that printed the
Independent,
thus had no personal liability for the newspaper's contents unless it could be proved that he directed the articles to be written. According to Reed, Ford had not done so and “to this blessed day” had not even read the Sapiro series.
⁴⁸

Gallagher called William Cameron to the stand on March 18, and the editor spent the next six and a half days protecting Henry Ford. Gallagher pounded away at the witness, trying to gain an admission that Ford had directed his activities as editor and, more specifically, his writing of the “Jewish Exploitation” articles. Cameron claimed that Ford was only barely acquainted with the activities of his newspaper. He testified that Ford dropped by its offices “from time to time” and that his philosophy influenced the publication only sometimes, “in a general way.” Cameron insisted that Ford not only never discussed the
Independent
's editorial policy or content, but never read the newspaper. He would concede only one definite conversation with Ford about the Sapiro articles. Moreover, he claimed he could not recall talking with Ford “about any articles about any individual Jews.” He doggedly stuck to this story as an incredulous Gallagher tried to break it down. But even Ford's people knew that Cameron was dissembling. “That was all done to take the heat off Mr. Ford,” Liebold noted later. “As far as the activities on the Jewish question are concerned, they were prompted largely by Mr. Ford. He kept in touch with every phase of it.”
⁴⁹

The next episode of high drama came when Aaron Sapiro was sworn in
as a witness. His attorneys highlighted Sapiro's rags-to-riches personal history and stressed his idealistic labors in the farm-cooperative movement. Then Reed cross-examined him for two contentious weeks. Day after day, the lawyer denigrated Sapiro's work, badgered the witness by mispronouncing his name, and claimed that he had engaged in profiteering. The confrontation became a bitter exchange of sarcasm, anger, and invective. Reed tried to establish that corruption rather than altruism had motivated Sapiro, while the defendant insisted that a veneration of farmers and rural life had inspired his career.
⁵⁰

As emotions intensified, Ford became increasingly nervous about his own appearance as a witness. Originally, he had welcomed taking the stand, but as the acrimony of the proceedings grew, he began to have second thoughts. With memories of his performance during the Chicago
Tribune
suit resurfacing, he sought to avoid being called. For several weeks, he engaged in elaborate ploys to evade being subpoenaed. One time his attorneys claimed that a subpoena had been given to Ford's brother by mistake, and in another instance that a subpoena dropped through Ford's car window failed to touch him as it fell through his knees to the floorboard. In Liebold's words, Ford sought “to do everything under the sun to get away from the witness stand.” Ford also became eager to keep Liebold from testifying. His office manager scrambled to avoid process servers for several weeks, until they finally cornered him near his home and chased him for a block to serve the subpoena.
⁵¹

It was amid such machinations that Ford's mysterious “accident” occurred on the road between his home and his office in Dearborn. Too battered to talk and in the care of his physicians, according to his attorneys, Ford would be unable to appear in court for some time. Some newspapers suggested that Ford had been the target of Jewish fanatics: “PLOT TO ASSASSINATE FORD SEEN” and “FORD INJURED BY ASSASSINS: HURLED OVER RIVER BANK IN CAR.” Others were skeptical about the injury. Attorneys for the plaintiff asked for an independent medical examination to establish Ford's physical condition; Sapiro claimed that Ford had “faked” the accident because his case was collapsing. The Ford organization reacted with a statement denying any assassination attempt and assuring the public that the industrialist would recover steadily, if not quickly.
⁵²

Then the Sapiro trial, just as it became a publicity circus, collapsed with a final twist. Ford's attorneys, acting on information gleaned by one of their operatives working the case, informed Judge Raymond that a juror had been offered a bribe by a Jew to convict Ford. The juror, Mrs. Cora Hoffman, angrily denied these charges in statements to the press. After this breach of
conduct, the judge had no choice but to grant a defense motion for a mistrial on April 21. A new trial was scheduled to begin in September.
⁵³

But Ford had seen enough. Under pressure, and increasingly unwilling to testify, he decided to throw in the towel. Summoning Fred Black to Fair Lane, he announced, “I want to stop the Dearborn
Independent
!” He ordered Black to come up with a plan for closure, and, indeed, on the last day of 1927, the newspaper quit publishing. Meanwhile, and even more important, however, Ford explored an out-of-court settlement with Sapiro. He enlisted journalist Arthur Brisbane; Joseph Palma, head of the New York office of the Secret Service; and Earl J. Davis, former assistant U.S. attorney general, as emissaries. They contacted Representative Nathan D. Perlman, a vice president of the American Jewish Congress, and Louis Marshall of the American Jewish Committee. Ford expressed regret about his role in the controversy and, after negotiation, agreed to release a formal apology and to make a cash settlement with Sapiro.
⁵⁴

Ford's apology was released to the major press agencies and published in newspapers on July 8. The retraction was complete—Marshall wrote most of it—as Ford confessed that he was “deeply mortified that this journal, which is intended to be constructive and not destructive, has been made the medium for resurrecting exploded fictions” such as
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
“I am fully aware of the virtues of the Jewish people as a whole,” he continued. He pledged he would make amends to the Jews by “asking their forgiveness for the harm that I have unintentionally committed, by retracting so far as lies within my power the offensive charges laid at their door.” But Ford also tried to save face. Asserting that he had not kept close watch on the
Independent
because of the “multitude of my activities,” he claimed to be shocked upon examining its anti-Jewish articles. “To my regret I have learned that Jews generally, and particularly those of this country, not only resent these publications as promoting anti-Semitism, but regard me as their enemy,” Ford wrote. He promised that “articles reflecting upon the Jews” would never again appear in his newspaper.
⁵⁵

The press generally welcomed Ford's statement, but opinion varied as to its sincerity. The Philadelphia
Record
described it as “A Gain for Tolerance”; the Indianapolis
Star
praised it as the means by which “Henry Ford Sets Himself Right.” The Pittsburgh
Gazette Times
said, “There will be common satisfaction in Mr. Ford's confession of error and in his promise to sin no more against a great body of American citizens.” Most Jewish publications accepted Ford's plea for forgiveness. The
American Hebrew
argued that his apology “breathes honesty and sincerity…. We forgive and will seek to forget.” Prominent Jews also expressed approval. “It is never too late to make amends, and I congratulate Mr. Ford that he has at last seen the
light,” said Julius Rosenwald, the Chicago philanthropist. Louis B. Mayer, the Hollywood producer, wrote a personal letter to Ford offering his “sincere admiration and appreciation” for the apology.
⁵⁶

But many others questioned either the sincerity of the apology or the moral integrity of the person making it.
The Christian Century
did not know what to make of Ford's “baffling maneuver.” Though approving of his rejection of anti-Semitism, the journal questioned his “passing the buck with a vengeance to Mr. Ford's employees.” The Chicago
Tribune
found the apology and the explanation to be implausible, since Ford clearly served as the “authority and pay-roll” for the Dearborn
Independent. The Nation
acerbically suggested that Ford's claim to have just learned of Jewish resentment would be fantastic were it not for his “almost incredible simple-mindedness.” The Richmond
Times-Dispatch,
though approving of his retraction of repugnant views, found his denial of knowledge about his newspaper's content to be ridiculous. It asserted that Ford's excuses “will be laughed at all over the United States.”
⁵⁷

Indeed, much joking followed the release of Ford's apology. Will Rogers cracked, “He used to have it in for the Jewish people until he saw them in Chevrolets, and then he said, ‘Boys, I am all wrong.’ ” The New York
Daily News
suggested that Ford could cement his new friendship with Jews by leaving the name “Ford” off his new car and calling it “the Solomon Six or the Abraham Straight-8.” Songwriter and theatrical producer Billy Rose offered a satirical song entitled “Since Henry Ford Apologized to Me.” Its lyrics included mocking stanzas such as these:

But those who knew Ford understood the fundamental crassness of his “apology.” Ernest Liebold claimed that Ford signed the statement just to be done with the matter: “He never even read that or knew what it contained. He simply told them to go ahead and fix it up.” Cameron expressed amazement. “I know Ford too well not to be absolutely sure that his views set forth in [those] articles are still his views, and that he thinks today as he always did,” he told an acquaintance. “I simply cannot understand his alleged statement.” Soon after the apology, John McCloud was aghast to hear a Ford tirade against a Jewish lawyer in a meeting. McCloud concluded,
“Mr. Ford, while he repudiated the articles, hadn't really changed his opinions one iota.”
⁵⁹